"He is a man whose word means nothing," she said, using parliamentary privilege to reject claims councils deserved $6 billion compensation for the state government's water asset takeover.

Mr Newman, a Liberal, had had a close working relationship with the former Labor premier Peter Beattie. Not so with Ms Bligh.

Now the duo will go head to head in Queensland's state election on March 24.

Mr Newman is seeking both a seat in Parliament and the Premier's job. Unusually, he was made leader of the Liberal National Party before entering Parliament.

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The election will be complicated by the report into the Queensland floods and the management of the Wivenhoe Dam, on the Brisbane River, which served as a water storage and flood mitigation tool.

The inquiry's report was due on February 24, but commissioner Catherine Holmes requested time for more hearings after allegations of a cover-up by dam managers. The report will now be released on March 16.

Ms Bligh and Mr Newman, who both played a prominent role in leading Brisbane through the January floods last year, now begin their election campaign in earnest.

After the floods, when the Premier and lord mayor shared the spotlight keeping the public informed and overseeing recovery efforts, Mr Newman began a war of words with the federal Labor government over disaster rebuilding funds.

By March, days before throwing his hat into the state arena, Mr Newman insisted he was still "committed to being the lord mayor of Brisbane" but railed against the "old and tired" state government which he said had "run out of ideas".

Tensions have heightened since. She has called him an "egotistical maniac"; he has called her a "sleaze bucket".

In July, Mr Newman used a speech to his party's annual conference to highlight the senior public service role held by Ms Bligh's partner, Greg Withers, arguing climate change policy in Queensland was "decided by the Premier's husband, not science".

Ms Bligh responded by accusing Mr Newman's family of capitalising on the suffering of flood victims. Mr Newman's wife, Lisa, was briefly the company secretary of Majella Global Technologies, a firm that began trying to sell disaster management software soon after the floods.